Meadham Kirchhoff Is Dead, Long Live Meadham Kirchhoff

The fashion rumor mill strikes again. This week it struck in London, where word has been making the rounds that Meadham Kirchhoff has shut down. This rumor turned out to be true. But also not.

Ben Kirchhoff and Edward Meadham were reached separately for comment, and they each had a different take on the situation for their brand. But both designers agreed on the upshot: Their debts have caught up with them, and there won’t be a Meadham Kirchhoff collection for Fall ’15. Or maybe there will be a collection, but it won’t be shown on a catwalk at London fashion week. They are currently figuring out the right way forward.

“The way the industry works, you’re driven to do all these grandiose shows, all these things that are incredibly expensive,” Kirchhoff told me, “and then one day, the sponsorship runs out. You’re on your own.”

The British fashion industry has been incredibly supportive of Meadham Kirchhoff over the years. There’s been financial support—sponsorships, etc.—and cheerleading support, from Meadham Kirchhoff’s devoted fans in the press. You could argue that the designers had the training wheels on long enough and by this point should have been able to manage the predictable expenses of running a fashion business—sample production, staging a show, order fulfillment, etc. Other brands have figured it out.

But you could make the case that the British fashion industry has needed Meadham Kirchhoff at least as much as the designers needed all that industry support. True provocateurs, Edward Meadham and Ben Kirchhoff have often seemed the last remaining link to the London fashion scene of yore, the one that spawned Sex shop and Alexander McQueen. There are other brilliant designers in London, but none who work in that subversive mold.

style: kissydressinau

And even so, Meadham Kirchhoff’s reputation for making uncommercial clothes was never that accurate. Yes, their delicate, handworked dresses could be eye-wateringly expensive. But then, the clientele at stores such as Harvey Nichols, Ikram, Browns, and other places Meadham Kirchhoff sells is prepared for those price points. No one complains about a Valentino dress costing an obscene amount.

“What we made, we sold,” Meadham pointed out. “Our problem has always been delivering what stores have ordered. It’s always seemed like, ‘How do we do this? How do we keep up?’”

How do we keep up? This is the question haunting a lot of designers these days, not just Meadham and Kirchhoff. And not just designers, for that matter: Buyers, editors, PRs, pretty much anyone involved in fashion has succumbed, at some point or another, to the sense that the industry has turned into a whirling dervish. Paris fashion week had barely ended before publicists began reaching out about appointments to see Pre-Fall. By the time the last pre-collections have been seen, New York fashion week will be upon us again. More samples to be produced, more models to be cast and fitted, more lookbooks to be shot, more orders to be tallied up, more product to be whipped up, more deliveries to be packed up according to the detailed instructions provided by various e-tailers and department stores. Complete and cycle and repeat. The pace is punishing. It’s punishing for designers who have giant luxury conglomerates behind them, and it’s punishing for emerging designers with an instinct for reliable income streams and a natural talent for infrastructure. For the likes of Meadham and Kirchhoff—designers with no head for business, really, and a penchant for conceptual longueurs and making things in their studio by hand—it’s basically an impossible industry to be a part of.

“It does seem like there ought to be some other way of doing things,” Kirchhoff told me, when I asked him whether he felt like a one-size-fits-all business model had been imposed on him and Meadham. “Is there a way of selling directly to your customers? Can you avoid doing a big catwalk show? Maybe it’s better to just quietly have a store. Or do private orders. I don’t know,” he went on. “At the moment, even thinking about the alternatives seems too exhausting.”

In the meantime, as Meadham and Kirchhoff contemplate the future, we can put the rumor mill to good use, perhaps by mooting that they are headed to Schiaparelli.